What is causing the labour shortages at the moment?

Your story all too common and sorry to hear this. Remain positive, I know easier said than done. I think it's really unfortunate that some think people are not genuinely trying to apply for jobs and essentially being ignored with the only narrative being "There's a shortage of Labour"

Good luck regardless 😉

Completely disagree, firstly Hospitality is not open a wet week, the RAI constantly stated 180k Hospitality staff looking forward to returning to work, at the time of that absurd statement the department of SW own stats stated 60k of pup recipients were from. Hospitality sector and I might add from. Numerous roles that had nothing to do with restaurants.

There continues to be this ill informed notion that PUP was too generous. As of September 2020 ( yes 2020) the PUP payment was drastically reduced, not more than 12% retained the max rate of €350 pw, Most get €300, €250 or €203 pw. As of 7th September 2021, anyone on the €250 and lower rate goes onto JSA and all students returning to full time education loose it

So just to put a little context, also. Worth pointing out there are still sectors fulling closed to include children's play centres, bowling alleys and even a lot of Pubs and restaurants have not reopened.

Finally there is by far more people in receipt of the wage subsidy scheme, in essence government paying 75% of payroll cost for 100"s of thousands of staff, essentially PUP under a different name propping up thousands of businesses.

It is, the Pandemic speeded up the move to online shopping and customers unlikely to return to high Street. Big cities might survive but a lot of large rural towns have seen footfall plummet since restrictions ended.

I don't equate Mac Donald's in the category of Hospitality sector and I'm not wishing to demean the perfectly good jobs they offer, I would question rates of pay, terms and conditions etc but I do take your point.

But the original question stems in part from labour shortages in two main sectors, Hospitality and construction as these are the sectors that have been most vocal about shortages. Whilst my experience is hospitality, I've laid out some reasons but its actually also the case some businesses in this sector are infact not actually hiring or bringing back experienced and qualified staff that are actually available and have been applying, instead relying on reduced staffing levels, reduced services and hiring less experienced part time staff. Just as an example, a number of hotels are not offering leisure facilities, some have reduced menu's, changed breakfast service format, one well known hotel recently fed its customers at its sister hotel across the road and a lot have either reduced or stopped room service. I've also explained an enormous amount of very experienced staff have left the country, not all but a lot. I've further stated the hospitality sector was very poor in taking up wage support schemes allowing them in some way retain staff, instead letting staff go and are now scratching their heads wondering how did that happen.

I don't know much about construction but I do know, more and more tradespeople are only being offered roles in a self employed capacity (contractor status), this is neither practical or viable for a lot of trades people so in a small way is perhaps affecting recruitment.

I expect there's a certain amount of people who've walked away from jobs and possibly out of the market completely after re-examining their priorities.

I mean, if your work day has consisted of both parents getting up at stupid o'clock, getting kids up and out the door to creche, getting back at five and spending an hour with the kids, rallying them to bed and then collapsing on the couch, monotonously over and over, lockdown would have been a massive shock to the system.

You can imagine plenty of people would have spent that time thinking, "Jaysus this is hard", but also, "WTF am I doing with my life". There would be a realisation with many people that one parent could ditch work, in full or in part, and between the savings on creche and other things, they'd only be down €2k a year, which can be found by reducing spending on cars or on TV or whatever

A huge amount of it is this, there's people who were treated awfully by the hospitality sector, crap pay, conditions and hours who have now found out there's far better and more stable jobs out there. The entire hospitality industry and from the anecdotal stories ive heard especially the pubs need to wake up and start treating their staff like people.

Although its not really surprising that the pubs are the worst offenders and are still acting like its everyone else who is in the wrong considering their absolute inability to adapt or change. Every time they are ever faced with a challenge or issues their lobbyists run to government to encircle the wagons and protect them from any consequences of being intransigent troglodytes.

The trouble nowadays is the young people won't do manual labour, they would rather work in Tesco or the hospitality industry and moan and complain about getting the minimum wage.

If they only did it for the summer they might spot some trade or some job they might be good at. but most would rather spend half their lives going to college and then can't get a job when they finish.

In construction, my boss has an awful time getting lads.

One fella, actually good to work wasn't bothered about going back to site legitimately, claiming pup until hes booted of and doing under the counter work for himself.

The agencies are offering the dregs, one fella on his first day drove a telehander into materials and literally fcuked off home. Lads with bad attitudes etc.